WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – Blue crab harvest limits proposed by the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries could increase seafood prices for Cape Fear area customers, according to local restaurant owners.

The state agency proposed the limits because officials say the blue crab population is declining. The restrictions were scheduled for a vote at the division’s November meeting but were removed from the agenda by the chairman.

However, many in the crabbing industry said they don’t think the issue is fully “dead in the water.”

“I am 1,000% sure it’s going to come back up next year,” said an advisor for the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition, Steve House.

Under the proposed changes, commercial crabbers in southeastern North Carolina would be limited to harvesting 15 bushels per trip during the fall season. Commercial crabbers currently harvest close to 50 bushels per trip on average.

Sam Romano, co-owner of Seaview Crab Company in Wilmington, said the limits would affect his business. Price increases would be inevitable if the limits pass.

“People come in here specifically for crabs, so we try to have them pretty much year around,” Romano said. “If we were cut back, invariably prices would go up.”

Romano said he believes most of the crabbing industry opposes the proposed restrictions.

“Probably zero crabbers really would be behind something like this because it is quite a change for us to deal with,” he said. “When you chip away at us slowly, we call it the death of a thousand cuts. We’ve faced so many different rules and impactful decisions as fisherman that it just seems like it’s just more on top of us.”

Romano said it’s these restrictions that are also discouraging younger generations from getting involved in the fishing and crabbing industries. House agreed.

“If you look across the board, mainly our youngest fishermen that are out there commercial fishing are well in their forties,” House said.

House said the coalition believes other factors contribute to declining blue crab populations, including water quality, natural predators and even invasive species like the blue gill catfish. They do not believe overfishing is the primary cause.

“We’ve asked them [Division of Marine Fisheries] time and time again, have your biologists come on the boats with our fishermen and our crabbers and we’ll show you what’s going on out there because what they’re saying in their data does not meet what our fishermen and crabbers are seeing on the water,” House said. “It’s not an overfishing situation. It’s more of a water quality situation. If they actually did water quality situation testing, they would see it’s not our fishermen just pulling crabs out of the water.”

He also questions their data that points to the population declining.

“Where they’re basing their information on is a stock assessment that was done in 2016,” House said. “And they’ve done stock assessments since then. However, those stock assessments did not meet peer review.”

WECT reached out to the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, but did not hear back by publication.

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